News Video, Get Your News Video

Sometimes we don’t give traditional media enough credit. They’re not lording over their content like the RIAA, after all. They’re starting to give away the stuff they should, like their video, seeking distribution across the web.

OK OK, news video is not exactly a hot commodity, but at least it’s not locked up in an archive somewhere.

Last week we spoke with Jeffrey Crigler, the CEO of Voxant, which is formally launching TheNewsRoom, with content from 150 sources such as the Associated Press, Reuters, CBS, and McClatchy-Tribune. It will allow any blogger or website publisher to sign up to embed custom feeds of video and other media formats. Ad revenue will be split with 20 percent to the site owner, 40 percent to the video owner, and 40 percent to Voxant.

Crigler told us he came in a year and a half ago when Voxant, a longtime news transcript provider, was going through a fire sale. Since then the company has raised $15.5 million in two rounds of funding from SoftBank Capital, Longworth Venture Partners, and Court Square Ventures.

The existing relationships with news providers are a major asset, according to Crigler. “We say, we’ve been sending you checks for 14 years, we understand the importance of your brand, and we’re going to work with you to get to the long tail.”

Voxant is also setting up an an aggregation site, to be called Noozilla, where it will search-engine optimize video transcripts, but send visitors off-site to view the clips. So if you sign up, you might even get few bonus page views out of the deal.